A Review on High Frequency Resonant Inverter Technologies for Wireless Power Transfer using Magnetic Resonance Coupling

Research on developing the applications of Wireless Power Transfer system (WPTS) has been increased considerably for the last few years. Plug-in Hybrid Electrical Vehicle & Electric vehicle charging is one of them. Due to operational and environmental benefit charging of these vehicles via Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) has been considered in academic and industrial research to obtain an environmental friendly future transportation system. Among various types of WPT system, Magnetic Resonant Coupling WPT (MRCWPT) has been appeared as an attractive technology for mid-range (200-300 mm), medium power (>2 kW) electric vehicle charging application. High frequency resonant Inverters play an important role in efficient MRCWPT vehicle charging system. Among different resonant inverter topology, class E and its variant have shown the potentiality in this type of WPT system due to its circuit simplicity, efficient high frequency operation by zero voltage switching (ZVS) etc. Along with this inverter some other potential inverter topologies have been discussed based on the last 5-6 years literature. Simulation results of class phi(2) inverter which has currently been modifying by the authors have been presented to confirm the potentiality of this type of inverter and design challenges have been addressed. A practical robust WPT vehicle charging system (based on literature) has been presented for a charging gap of 200-300 mm. Authors are currently working on designing resonant inverter topology for this type of WPT vehicle charging system.